Sources of Poetry

Teacher-librarian M Ekdahl2007

Different kinds …

• Lyric• Narrative• Haiku• Sonnets• Found• Concrete• Slam• Hip hop

Poetry is Pervasive – it’s Everywhere …

• Songs• Ads• Jingles• Obituaries• Books• Magazines and journals• “the field” … by chance … “found”

It’s Online – or is it???

A search of google on July 17, 2007, for “poetry” indicates there are about 146 million sites

By my calculations, it would take three long lifetimes, at the rate of one site per minute, to view all the sites.

Quality of online sources?

When using anything online, it is important to remember:

Anyone can publish anything on the net.

You can limit your online search …

• Funny poems – only 2.7 million• Love poems – 4.19 million• Tree poems – 2.23 million• Dog poems – 2.4 million• Tupac poems – over 1 million• Science poems – 2.28 million!!• e. e. cummings poems – 806 000

sites• Frost poems – 1.5 + million

How about a poetry database?

Databases are organized searchable information sources

They form part of the “invisible net” – you cannot access them by google, only by rights of “membership” (subscription)

Let’s look at Granger’s Poetry D/base

On a school computer, type in webcat and click onto the Databases tab.

Choose Granger’s Poetry online (in third column, Web Resources).

Userid: 39gl Password: library

Tree poem?

First line search …I think that I shall never seeA poem lovely as a tree …

Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

“Lovely” by Jon Scieszka in Science Verse I think that I ain’t

never seenA poem ugly as a spleenA poem that could make you shiver,Like 3.5 … pounds of liver.

Ogden Nash – funny poet

I think that I shall never seeA billboardlovely as a treeIndeed, unless the billboards fallI’ll never see a tree at all

Poems about dogs?

There are 376 full-text poems about dogs and 2 about prairie dogs

For example:

Now that he has a childhe knows all the local dogsby name.

* Citation is included: Senryu, Karai. “Now that he has a child.” The Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry. 25 July 2006.

Famous poets?

Try:Americans like Bukowski, Frost, Dickinson, cummings, Ferlinghetti …

Internationally known poets like Shakespeare, Keats, Rossetti, Brownings, Neruda …

Canadian Content ?

Weak but growing …

Check for Birney, Atwood

You won’t find Cohen, etc.

As for Tupac, Rap, and Hip Hop …

Why not try a book?

Seek only that which has been reviewed and published

Anyone can call what they write “a poem” and publish it online!

THE END